If You Want A Urine Sample, You're Gonna Have to Take it by Force

My poor baby is sooooo sick right now. She has had a gross phlegmy cough since Monday. On Tuesday night she developed a low-grade fever. By Thursday, the fever was spiking up to 104. The last time that happened was when she had a kidney infection. But the cough was throwing us off a bit so in to the doctor we went.

As is the usual fashion when taking Claire to the doctor, we now know a slew of things she DOESN'T have and still are unsure of what she does have. The first course of action, based on her medical history, was to test for a bladder infection. Boy was that fun. They, of course needed to collect a urine sample. I had to stifle a giggle when the doctor asked if Claire could pee on command. Really? A 20 month old? Maybe some babies can pee on command, but that is not a skill that Claire has mastered as of yet. I could almost see myself in a magician's hat and cape waving my arms about triumphantly, "Tah Dah!! I present to you . . . a peeing child!!!"

So since my child is not a "command urinater", we were left with two options: use of a catheter or tape a plastic bag to her girlie parts and wait for the natural . . . er . . . flow of things. In the past, the doctors opted for the catheter, but today we got to experience the fun that was the plastic bag.

So within minutes, they had taped a plastic bag to her nether regions, replaced her diaper and sent us off to run errands for half an hour to give her a chance to fill the bag. Well, we left and waited almost 2 hours with no pee in sight. Who can blame her? Peeing does require some sort of relaxation and who can relax with a foreign object taped to the very spot you are supposed to be relaxing? Silly doctors.

By the time we got back to the doctor's office, her temp had raised from 98.7 to 102 so they decided to just prescribe antibiotics in the hope that it would do the trick on whatever mystery infection was taking over. However within about 5 minutes, her temp was up to 103 and this continuous rise gave reason for a blood panel. My poor baby. So they took blood and guess what? We now knew it wasn't a bacterial infection in her bladder. So what was it? Still don't know.

They swabbed her nose to check for the flu and nope, not that. So what was it? Shrug.

We finally left the office with a very unhappy baby and a prescription for antibiotics that we were told, "may or may not help". "Chalk it up to a random childhood virus that just has to run it's course" we were told. So we are now at home "chalking it up" as it were.

While we were on Pee-Watch, I had plenty of time to take a good look at ourselves and realize just how White Trash we looked. Here I present to you a list of my ponderings:

1) In a rush to get to the doctor's office, we forgot to put socks and shoes on Claire. Lovely.

2) After the taping of the bag on the baby, we needed frequent access to the diaper to check for success so we left her pants off and just let her lounge in T-shirt and diaper. Ahhhh yes, we're getting there.

3) We needed breakfast so we headed to McDonald's with the half naked child. (this is probably a bullet point all in itself) I am standing at the counter waiting to order when I realize that the bottom half of my pregnancy girth is peaking out from under my shirt--since I am now at the stage where NONE of my maternity shirts fit anymore. I can sense my WT award on its way.

4) Since Claire has eaten virtually nothing all week, we really wanted to do whatever we could to get fluids into her so we ordered her the only thing we could think of that she might ingest . . . . a wonderful WT diet of apple juice and ice cream. Of which she took in neither.

4) While waiting for Claire to . . . um . . . . go, we didn't want to just strap her into her car seat, so we sat in the parking lot and let her sit in the front seat in Daddy's lap. This means driver's side, in front of the steering wheel, Britney Spears style. Oh yeah baby.

Throw in the snotty nose, bed head and pathetic looks Claire was sporting and you have for yourself a real white trash moment. But who cares when your baby is sick right? Sure, we'll go with that.